Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has never been afraid to say what he thinks, even if what he thinks happens to be more than a little condescending towards competing companies. The last six months has been significant for Microsoft in that it has launched its latest Windows 8 operating system and more recently launched its Office 365 productivity suite. So far, sales for Windows 8 in the new computer market have been less than impressive and Microsoft is struggling with its Surface RT tablet.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently conducted an interview with Bloomberg where he talked about Dropbox, the cloud storage service, and other competing services. When Ballmer was asked about Dropbox and how Microsoft's own cloud-storage service SkyDrive would compete, Ballmer became condescending.

Bloomberg asked how Microsoft planned to compete when it was late to the cloud-storage market and Dropbox already has 100 million users. Ballmer said, "Well, you’ve got to remember, 100 million sounds like a pretty small number to me, actually. We’ve got a lot more Office users. And actually if you even want to go to the cloud, we have a lot of Hotmail and SkyDrive users. I’m not beating on Dropbox. They’re a fine little startup and that’s great."

Ballmer famously mocked the iPhone upon its introduction

Moving to Office, despite the fact that Microsoft already has 1 billion users of the productivity suite, Ballmer still believes that number will grow. Microsoft is betting big that its subscription component of Office 365 will further drive adoption.

And with regards to offering an Office app on the iPad, Ballmer simply said that he has "Nothing to say on that topic." Ballmer did point out that Microsoft has ways for people to get to Office through a browser, which is how iPad users are able to use Office.

Yup google drive is the way to go, once you give in and join the google universe. All of your documents are on every device you own and open seamlessly into google docs. MS seems to be doing their normal innovation(copying) and providing equivalent services now. I'm not sure how the business model works for MS providing free online office. By the way it works even better if you give up on your iOS devices and just go all google.

PS the more I get tied into google services the more chrome OS becomes appealing. I'm realizing I really don't need to install a bunch of individual programs on my laptop anymore. Of course for my gaming machine and HTPC I can't see moving from windows in the foreseeable future.

I enjoy playing games on my laptop too much to go with a Chromebook. I wish I could make it work though, I think its a great idea for most people.

If you want to run Windows then IMO do it on a proper laptop, not some $250 thing that'll barely run it well. ChromeOS can get away with slow hardware and still be smooth since it has such low overhead, so it being on cheap hardware is really no big deal.

Google's iOS applications are all really great. Skydrive and OneNote for iOS are really good as well. I have no need for Skydrive though, I'm a Chrome/GMail user and Drive slots in way more conveniently for me. Obviously it'd be different if I was a WP8 user, especially since Google has no intention of supporting WP8 or Windows RT/Metro.

quote: By the way it works even better if you give up on your iOS devices and just go all google.

Automatic centralized integration is obviously something Android has nailed and its really great, but entering your credentials individually into Chrome/GMail/Drive isn't the worst tradeoff given that they're still really good apps. The best versions of Google Maps, Chrome, and Voice Search are actually all on iOS at the moment (updates will bring the Android versions up to parity at some point).

So yeah, no real need for Skydrive, not when Google is doing a much better job supporting multiple mobile and desktop platforms. It'd obviously be a different story if I was hardcore into Windows 8 and WP8, Skydrive/Outlook/IE all the way then.

Um... what platform is Google supporting that SkyDrive isn't? I have SkyDrive app on iPhone and Android tablet, and of course everything Windows is supported. Google will not support WP8 and RT, to my knowledge.

Anyway, I'm using Windows at home and at work, so it made sense to me to stay with the platform... so I'm using Outlook.com for my personal email/calendar/contacts. So far Outlook has been syncing everything well between my laptop, desktops, iPhone and Android tablet. I'm also finding Outlook.com web portal much nicer to look at than Gmail; that is probably my personal taste only, but it works for me... so SkyDrive came naturally.

I don't know if this is true, but a few months back I came across article comparing various email providers (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoomail...) and MS offering came out first in terms of security, by a small margin only, but still. MS also claims they will never-ever litim the size of mailbox - again, something that only trial of time will confirm... or not. Last time I've checked, Gmail was sitting at 10GB. That is plenty, but "unlimited" is "plentier".

Finally - and this is completely personal opinion, not a fact - I trust MS more than Google. Probably because Google is in advertising, while MS is in enterprise, where loosing customers' trust is not an option.

Great points all around. I'm with you on the last point, even though I know some Googlers personally and they are great people and have nothing but good things to say about Google's ethos, I still prefer MS's business model over Google's. Customer support is one big difference, for instance.

quote: google drive is the way to go, once you give in and join the google universe. All of your documents are on every device you own and open seamlessly into google docs.

But what if you don't want to join the Google universe? What if privacy and security matter to you?What's needed is a service with open-source apps (so the security can be independently verified) that encrypts and decrypts your files on the device, not on their servers. If your files are ever on their servers "in the clear", then you have no control, no privacy, and no security. Even the new Mega has your files "in the clear" at some point in the encryption process.

"If you look at the last five years, if you look at what major innovations have occurred in computing technology, every single one of them came from AMD. Not a single innovation came from Intel." -- AMD CEO Hector Ruiz in 2007